The Final Post

Well, here I’m writing the last post of the semester and, I expect, from the English Program, and this blog will be about a very interesting topic, how the environment affects the policies made by the public administration. The first relevant question about this is really the public administration makes policies? an issue that has been addressed by various authors. For example, Woodrow Wilson says that the politic and the administration must be separated, leaving the creation of policies for the first group, so that the administration is only responsible for implementing them, but on the other side of the spectrum academics like Ora-orn Poocharoen and Oscar Oszlack pose that the administration plays an important role in the formulation of policies.

Anyway, in both cases the environment plays an important role when policies are being created. There is a lot of cases of policies that were born product of the pressure that the society exerted, a clear example of this is the educational reform, which arose as a result of the large number of mobilizations carried out by secondary and higher students and that forced the government to carry out reforms around what the mobilized students demanded.

Examples like the above proves how the environment and the pressure made by different groups affects the making of new policies, and this will surely continue to happen in the future because the necessities of the people change with the time, so one day the citizens will demand one policy about one topic and the other will demand another about a different one.

So, that’s all, thanks for being reading my blogs this semester, may the force be with you.

My Blogging Experience

To be completely honest, when I started doing blogs in English III the last semester I did not think it was interesting or entertaining to do, especially because the topics of the blogs were so boring and common, but this semester, even though it's not one of my favorite activities, or that I really enjoy doing, writing blogs has been less tedious and more enriching, at least from my point of view.

One of the reason of why I think this it’s because the topics of the blogs have been much more interesting and creative, furthermore that in some blogs we have the freedom of writing about any topic we want, so we could occupy all our imagination making the blogs. An example of the above was that one classmate talk about his favorite sport, another about his best city and I talk about my favorite musician Rick Wakeman, demonstrating the variety of interests that exist in the class.

Despite not being a fan of blogging, I must admit that this activity has helped to improve my writing skills, and the Wow Word Policy has allowed me to know a lot of words that I had never seen, and some even I have incorporated them into my usual English.

English Language Challenges

The English language is part of my every day, the 99% of the music that I liked is in English, many of the videos that I see are in English too and for the university I had to read a lot of texts in English, so this language, that many times give me problems, it’s an important part of my life, and thinking about it well, I decided this.

For the above situations, and others like the importance of the English language on the academic field and the usefulness of English, for example, when you travel to other countries I think that improve my English it’s very important, and something that has helped me in this task, although not with the intensity I expected, is the English program of the university. If you want to know what I think that this program doesn’t have the impact that should, see my previous post where I deal with this topic.

As I say before, one of the reasons of why I think that improve my English it’s because this language has a very important role in the academic field of public administration. Most of the classic texts and books related with the career were written in English originally, and many of these doesn’t have good translations, thus if someone wants to, or should, read them, they will have to do it in their original language, demonstrating the importance of having at least a basic notion of English to give an idea of ​​what each author wants to express.

Improving the learning experience

To be honest, when I started in the English Program of the University I thought that wasn't very useful, because we study topics that I learn in the school and, in my opinion, wasn’t themes that will help understand English in a better way.  Anyway, this semester I felt that this situation change, because we started to study in other way, like if we we’re really speaking and understanding the English, with very interesting and funny activities and working more intriguing topics that the last semester.

Activities like the one we did at the first class with all the people talking at the same time or the one where we had to give directions to a person that doesn’t know the city were extremely useful for practicing true English, that which is used in everyday life, so I think that the other teachers of the English program should put them into practice with the other sections of students.

Other things I think would help to do better the English program could be do videos in groups, because when I did that in the school I have very good and funny experiences working with my classmates, so doing it in the university probably would be equally interesting, or play Simon Says in English, because, I don’t know, if you don’t know the words, you learning seeing what your classmates do.

So, that´s all for today, I hope you read my next posts, have a great day and life, bye bye folks!!!!

The Guerrilla Government

One of the most interesting subject this semester its one named “The Public Administration and Political Phenomena”, in which we read a lot of texts of different topics related to the career, like the bureaucracy of Max Weber, the New Public Administration or the Open Government, but the one that I think was the most interesting was one related with the ethic in the public administration that talk about the “guerrilla governments”.

Now you’re probably asking yourself what I’m talking about? "Guerrilla government" is Rosemary O'Leary’s term for the actions of public workers who work against the wishes of their superiors, principally because they are dissatisfied with the actions of public organizations, programs or people and typically, for strategic reasons, they decide not to publicly express their annoyance. That is how these public workers, for many reasons, don’t follow the current within their institutions and perform actions that they consider correct even though they go against the instructions of their superiors.

Examples of this guerrilla governments are the case of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomatic that lived in the Nazi Lithuania during world war II who clandestinely signed a lot of visas to save Jewish refugees or the case of Mark Felt, second in command in the FBI in the 70’s who secretly leads to reporters exposed the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon.

The previous examples demonstrate that sometimes the guerrilla governments are good in some occasions, because expose bad practices in the public administration or solve injustices that occur in the society.

Post graduates studies

 

The main reason of why I'm studying Public Administration it's because I want to work in the future as a diplomatic. I want to do this because will give me the opportunity to know other countries and cultures all over the world, but I just can´t finish the university degree and do it, first I must enter to the diplomatic academy so I need to postulate first, and in that competition the postgraduate’s studies are very important. For that reason, the last months I have been thinking a lot about which of these studies I would like to do, and I have two principally choices, a Master in Political Science and a Master in History.

For the first master, the Master in Political Science, my first option is to continue my studies in the institution where I'm now, The Instituto de Asuntos Publicos of the Universidad de Chile, because it has a program of continuity of studies so would be the better option to do it fast, but I also have other options like the Universidad Catolica or the Universidad de Santiago because I have heard that this universities have very good programs in the political science area.

In the case of the Master in History I'm not sure about what is the best choice, but I would really like to do it in other country, because I think that would give the chance to kwon other reality’s and points of view the history, besides the fact of let me travel and see other countries and cultures. If I choose this option I will need to think a lot about in what county I would do the master, specially taking into consideration that if I decide to do it in a country where doesn’t speak Spanish I must keep practicing my English to have with communication with my teachers and classmates.

My Dream Job

When I was a boy I have many dream jobs, the first one I remember was to become a dentist, but I don’t remember why, then I wanted to be paleontologist because I was really in love with the dinosaurs after sawing a hundred times movies like “Jurassic Park” and “The Land Before Time”, but the dream job that was very important to me was to become a detective.

The reason of why I wanted to be detective was very simple, in one step of my childhood I saw many movies and TV series about investigations and crimes, I remember that one animated Serie named “School of Detectives” was my favorite and I really wanted to be like the characters of the show.

In that time, I was so excited about became a detective that I started to read books about the topic, like the Sherlock Holmes novels or some stories of Edgar Allan Poe, I remember that one called “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was very special to me, principally for his amazing and creative history.

Anyway, when I was in the school I left this dream because I realized that I don’t tolerate the blood, I don’t know why but if I see it I feel bad, even if it’s a little bit of it, so I couldn’t be a detective because it’s a job that probably would imply a lot of blood and images that I really prefer not to see.

So, there I was, about to finish the school and without a job that I would like to do in the future, until one day I decided that my new dream job would be one that should give me the opportunity to travel and meet cultures all over the world, so asking and investigating I found the diplomatic career, the reason of why I’m studding public administration and why it’s very important to me keep practicing my English, but that’s a story for another day…

The Wizard of the Keyboards

As you can see in my past posts, my favorite band is Queen, but my favorite solo artist it’s a man that just with a group of keyboards can make extraordinary and complex music, the wizard of the keyboards Rick Wakeman. Born in England in 1949, he gained popularity in 1971 when he became a member of the progressive rock band Yes, one of the most important bands of the genre, where he participated in magnificent albums like Roundabout, Close to The Edge and Tormato, demonstrating his awesome skills with the piano and keyboards. He also plays as music session in song of many artist like David Bowie, playing the piano in “Life on Mars” and the mellotron in “Space Oddity”, the two best songs of Bowie in my opinion, the beautiful piano intro at Cat Steven’s “Morning has Broken” or Black Sabbath’s “Sabbra Cadabra”.

Besides I love the Wakeman’s work with Yes and other artist, it’s the solo career of Rick what makes him my favorite musician, his conceptual albums are just incredible, the way he makes so many melodies and extraordinary song with his keyboards and invited musician it’s something indescribable. The first time I heard “Journey to The Centre of The Earth” I was shocked by the way he mixes an orchestra with instruments like the Minimoog and how he tells this incredible history with his music, so I started to search his other albums, finding pieces like “The Six Wives of Henry VIII”, with songs like Catherine Parr that prove that he is one of the best keyboardist of all time, the best in my opinion.

I’m waiting the opportunity to see him in a live concert, I don’t lose the hope to listen those beautiful songs that he played in his many keyboards and pianos sitting in the first line of his concert and making one of my dreams come true.

My Best Concert Ever

One of the few things that I'm pretty sure about it, it's that my favorite band in the world is Queen, so when I finally could go to a concert of this marvelous band I was really excited and happy, I couldn't contain my emotion. Of course it wasn't the all band, sadly, Freddie Mercury, one of the best, if not THE best front man in rock history died in November 1991 due to a bronchial pneumonia complicated from AIDS, leaving an enormous legacy of hits and good music, and generating the soon retire of bassist John Deacon, writer of songs like "Another One Bites the Dust" or "I Want to Break Free", leaving the band with only two members, Brian May, legendary guitar known for his signature sound making with his “Red Special” and Roger Taylor, one of the best singing drummers and second vocalist in the concerts.

But they didn’t came alone, to this new tour they recruited a young man who participated at “American Idol” with an awesome voice that convinced Brian and Roger that his one the perfect men to take the hard position of being the singer of Queen, creating the project “Queen + Adam Lambert”. To be honest, I didn’t know much about this guy named Adam, so I went to the concert just expecting to see the two legends of rock and have a good time listening the sound of the guitar and the drums, but Lambert was extraordinary, it was a surprise how he sang with passion and professionalism classic songs like Radio Gaga or Killer Queen, he really seized the public.

It was a magical night, see all the people singing Love of my Life with the video of Freddie and the opera section of Bohemian Rhapsody it´s something that I will never forget, and if they came again, I will be the first person making the line to buy a ticket to revive that night of the September 30th at the National Stadium.

                                          

The Walk of Life

If for any reason someone came to me and give me the option of visit a country, I would choose England without any doubt, maybe Switzerland and Norway had prettier green fields, or Singapore had some of the most technological cities, but none of these are some interesting to me as England, because in this country have born the most important bands of all time.

Just think in visit places so important to the rock music like Abbey Road, the iconic musical studio where bands like The Beatles and Pink Floyd record some of the most important albums, Garden Lodge, the house of the one and only Freddie Mercury, or the legendary Wembley Stadium, witness of some of the most important events of the rock music, the Live Aid for example, makes me feel very exciting and inspire me to work every day to in the future make this dream come true.

I really love the English rock music, so visit this places would make me very happy, I can imagine me walking on the London avenues and meet Rick Wakeman, the mythical Yes keyboard player and owner of that British humor so characteristic, to later meet Brian May, the guitarist of my favorite band, Queen, and talk about things like music, the English culture or astronomy.

But the music it's not my only reason to choose England, I really like the English culture, take one of the classic red buses of London or see the change of the Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace must be very interesting and attractive, like go to football matches at those big stadiums or visit cities like Edinburgh or Liverpool.

For all these reasons, I would like to visit England, land of good music, great castles and ancient culture.

The Expert

If I had to choose for an expert on my field, I would choose without any doubt Jaime Fierro, the best teacher that I have had in the year and a half of University, where he was my teacher in two subjects, “Ideas y Debates Politicos Contemporaneos” and “Estudio de los Fenomenos Politicos”

Jaime Fierro have a Ph.D. in Politic Science from the University of Essex (England), a Doctorate in Moral and Politic Philosophy from the University of Chile and a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Valladolid-University of Salamanca, Spain, among others academic degrees.

As academic, he has made more than 120 subjects and seminars, many of them in the School of Government and Public Gestation, where I study and where I have had the pleasure of met him. He also received the distinction to the best teacher of the Institute of Public Issues, a prize that demonstrated the quality of his classes and the affection that the students have for him.

I choose Jaime Fierro because I think that he is the best example of a person that is constantly studying and learning new things, his three doctorates prove it, and a person that enjoy sharing his knowledge, always doing it with a smile in his face and with the best disposition.